Irwin was launching his Tarantella collection of hand-knotted rugs with a book on Italian culture from Puccini to Bugatti edited by Clive Aslet. “The book is our homage to ordinary Italy which is often extraordinary,” says Irwin. “We have not written about palazzos or popes, Michelangelo or Leonardo. We have examined how Italians take what would be mundane in other countries and make it sublime.”